A Makeshift Dream

  

  The entrance sealed with an echoing thud above. 

  “Varjak!” Johnny, an Englishman in his late thirties that wasn’t terribly bright, scrambled down the ladder. 

  “Johnny, what did you do? You were meant to be back ten minutes ago!” said Varjak. 

  Johnny panted heavily.

  “I’m sorry! I think I’ve been seen! I didn’t mean to, I promise I didn’t!”

  Varjak’s face dropped. 

  “Then why in the Hell did you split up from the group you idiot?”

  “Varjak,” said Kate softly, appearing over his shoulder.

  “No, I won’t have it! This is ridiculous! How do you even know you were seen?”

  Johnny’s eyes were saucers. 

  “I - I don’t know! I just - felt it! When I was coming back, it was like…I don’t know! Like I wasn’t alone!”

  Varjak growled. 

  He shrugged Kate off and marched to the common room, throwing the curtains aside. 

  Kate meekly followed. 

  “MEETING! Meeting in the common room!” 

  Those already in the common room - this included Camille and Tristan - backed into their seat in shock. 

  Others began to enter the common room, looking cautiously over at Varjak as they slid into one of the numerous leather sofas. 

  “Present, everyone? GOOD. I have a few new ground rules I’d like to set about leaving the facility.” 

  “Uh, excuse me,” said Camille, raising her hand. “We’ve not heard anything about this. You’re meant to consult us.”

  Varjak took a breath. 

  “Right, fine. This is a proposal of new rules about leaving the facility! Except they’re not up for discussion! Johnny here - ” 

  He roped Johnny in with an arm, much to his bewilderment. 

  “ - has been extra specially smart and has possibly compromised the facility. Since we have nothing to back this, I don’t feel we should abandon ship just yet. But I do feel we need to tighten things up around here. 

  When you’re out, you’re no longer allowed to be visible. I don’t care how much make -up you put on, you’re not allowed visibility until we four decide. That fair enough Camille?”

  “Well I guess. What do you think, Tristan?”

  “Uh, yeah. Yeah, that seems fair.”

  “On again, are we?” said Varjak, tone levelling and wiggling his brows at the pair. 

  Camille’s brow furrowed. 

  “What? Oh.” She realised. “I hate you, Varjak. Take no notice Tristan.”

  “I try not to.”

  Kate rolled her eyes, lingering over the fireplace. 

  “You’re worse than a pair of taps you. Hot and cold. Fired up one minute and larking around the next.”

  “Anyway,” said Varjak loudly. “I’m not taking any more silly risks. I also propose we set up a guarding system where a couple of us man the entrance for a few hours at a time. Camille, my ever so dearestly dear, if you wouldn’t mind drumming up a little rota for me?” 

  Camille’s look was dark. 

  “I’m not your secretary. I’ll just presume you want me to use my military brain to create pairings to guard that compliment each other in case of an emergency.”

  Varjak stared at her. 

  “Well, yes, that would be helpful too.”

  Camille rolled her eyes. 

  “I’ll get on it. Just ask a bit more nicely next time.” 

  She hopped over the back of the sofa she and Tristan were occupying and disappeared behind the curtains. 

  Varjak took a long sigh, feeling the eyes of the room on him. 

  “Yeah, yeah okay, I’m sorry guys. I’m sorry Johnny.” 

  He slapped Johnny amiably on the back.   

  He shot Varjak a look of uncertainty before escaping and scuttling behind a sofa. 

  “We’ve just spent so long on this place and building up recruits that it would be a waste to see it go because somebody wasn’t careful enough. If any of you die, I’m going to feel it’s on my head no matter what the circumstance is.”

  Kate placed a hand on Varjak’s shoulder. 

  He spared her a glance that left a mark on Kate. 

  “We understand,” said one of the undead, a thirty year old dark haired woman named Ashley.  “And we all appreciate the efforts you go to to make sure we’re safe.”

  “Yeah, just don’t be so ratty about it,” snorted the twenty year old Drake, lounging on the sofa.   

  He had been a runaway teen living on the streets when they found him. 

  His mom was dead and his father was perpetually paralytic, so he was happy to join their ranks and feel of use. 

  “I’m a jerk yeah,” agreed Varjak. “Alright okay well, carry on as you were. Camille will have the rota up within the hour.”

  The rabble of conversation resumed. 

  Varjak moved out towards the curtains, and Kate followed. 

  “See? When you’re nice to people, you get further.”

  “Kate, you’re a pain.” 

  “Why thank you.”

  Varjak moved into his makeshift office, just a few metres up from the common room. 

  Camille was there, a desk light concentrated on the paper she was scribbling on. 

  “Think you’ll have that up within the hour?” asked Varjak. 

  “Um, yeah,” gurgled Camille, the end of the pen occupying her mouth. 

  Varjak’s office was bare, as was to be expected. 

  There was a desk made of recycled wood, a brown armchair, a desk light and a laptop that was not connected to the Internet. 

  Kate said it would have been helpful to keep up with current affairs, but Varjak lightly reminded her that the undead could track IP addresses just as easily as humans. 

  Forty five minutes later, Camille peeled back the common room curtains, sheet of paper in hand. 

  Kate was there, chatting to Drake about the last series of American Idol. 

  Varjak was presumably in his office or consuming more of the confiscated goods. 

  Camille held the paper to the hard earth wall and pushed pins in each of the four corners. She left the room soon after. 

  Kate immediately went to the rota to see who was first to guard, after much prompting from Drake and Ashley. 

  “It’s me and Varjak,” she announced to the common room, to general replies and sighs of relief. 

  Damn you, Camille, she thought. 

  Punish Varjak all you like, don’t rope me into it too. 

  “What’s you and me?” asked a voice, and suddenly Varjak dipped upside down into her vision. “Ah crap, we’re first on duty? Thanks a bunch, Camille!” he called in the general direction of the curtain. 

  “I’m not that bad,” Kate said, snorting. 

  “Oh, I know you’re not!” Varjak ruffled her curls, making them frizzier than before. “It’s just that it would have been nice not to stand silent outside in the cold for hours.”

  “Well someone has to do it,” said Kate, irritably patting down her hair again. “Silent? Oh yeah, of course.”

  “Oh yes, of course,” repeated Varjak, appearing right side up. “Oh well, better get it over and done with huh? Hey, we can’t talk up there, but we could always - ”

  “Varjak!” Kate hissed, glancing back at the common room.

  “Snuggle?”

  Kate rolled her eyes. 

  “Snuggle yourself. We’ll be sitting and guarding. Who’d want to snuggle with YOU anyway.”

  “Camille, obviously,” he replied, grinning.

  “Obviously. Come on then, silly.”

  They drifted out of the common room, and began to climb up the ladder in front of them. 

  “Hey, I’m thinking, maybe you should have gone up the ladder first…”

  “Varjak, so help me God you creepy pervert.”

  “No! It wasn’t so I could check out your a*s!”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t!”

  Varjak had reached the top. Kate stopped just underneath his foot. 

  “Let’s reappear up there, just in case,” said Varjak.

  “Like, not open the door?”

  “Yes, obviously.”

  Kate growled. 

  “My last words to you for the next few hours are going to be ‘I hate you, Varjak’.” 

  “Good to know!” Varjak said gleefully down to her. 

  Then, they both disappeared from the ladder. 

  Kate stumbled at the top of the hideout. She couldn’t see where Varjak had got to. 

  “Kate, invisibility!” hissed his voice. 

  “Oh right, sorry.” 

  She felt herself wobble out of view, and looked down to nothing. It was disconcerting looking down and not seeing your own body. 

  “Can’t we whisper, Varjak? I don’t want to sit here saying nothing.”

  There was no response for a solid moment.

  “Come on, seriously.”

  “Shh!” came the urgent response. 

  “I fancy you.”

  That did it. 

  “Kate, stop pissing around.”

  “I’m not, it’s just so unlikely that us talking is going to do anything. Please, Varjak.”

  “Okay, whatever. But keep your voice down.”

  Kate planted herself cross -legged on the ground with satisfaction. 

  “Good.”

  There was another soft thud next to her as Varjak sat down. 

  “Why are you so hyper today?”

  “I think it was all that chocolate I ate,” she said, stretching her legs in front of her. “Funny how you’re not affected by it.”

  “I’m too worried to get hyper,” said Varjak. 

  There was a moment of contemplation. 

  “Kate, we need to create a plan if we get ambushed. We’ll be in a tight facility with little space to fight back.”

  “If we get ambushed, we’d have to just leave,” said Kate. “We’re not ready to fight back.”

  “I agree,” said Varjak. “So, we all just flit off? To where?”

  “Split off in pairs. Camille and Tristan, Drake and Ashley, Johnny and Emma, you and me and the rest.”

  “We could do that. Split off and go to random places, then establish a way of meeting up every so often until it’s safe enough to join back up.”

  “Yeah,” said Kate. “But then what? We all start looking for the stone?”

  “I guess so,” said Varjak. “No point just hanging around in different countries and not looking for information.”

  Kate sighed. 

  A few weeks after their encounter with James, she and Varjak had returned to France and the old camp with Camille and Tristan. 

  One night round the fire, they discussed what they were going to do next in their quest to defeat the undead. 

  They quickly agreed upon building up an army of willing recruits to help. 

  Next, they decided to build a reserve where they could teach the new undead and prepare themselves. 

  Once this was certain, Varjak let out a random thought on the stone. 

  Did they need all their recruits if the four could take down the undead themselves by destroying the stone long ago mentioned by Ben? 

  It was certainly a possibility.

  As a result, the four decided to do both. 

  Build up an army, and at the same time try to discover more information on the stone.   

  However, they had been so occupied with recruiting and building the makeshift facility that the quest for the stone had fallen by the way side.

  That and the fact destroying the stone would kill themselves too meant the stone was soon forgotten about.

  “It would be a nice advantage for finding the stone if we had people in different countries, definitely. Especially since it’s supposed to be on a ley line.”

  “You know, I drifted into a computer store the other day and Googled it when no one was looking,” said Varjak. There was a familiar devilishness in his voice. “There was a lot of crap about ancient quests and myths and stones, but not that much on this stone in particular. I even Googled the undead, just got a load of stuff about zombies and something called Twilight.”

  “Oh yeah, think I heard about Twilight,” said Kate. “Not sure what it is, though. Did you find out anything about the stone?”

  “Just some unfinished, uninformed Wikipedia article. It was headed ‘The Necrosis Stone’, and said basically no one knows anything about it, but it’s supposed to date back to the Medieval times like Ben said.”

  “The Necrosis Stone…nice.” Kate yawned. “Why can I still yawn?”

  “Force of habit? Or maybe I’m just boring you.”

  “Never.”

  Varjak sighed. 

  “I barely ever leave the facility. When I do it’s for a purpose, like that. You lot just go for Heat magazines and sweets.”

  “Got to have some fun in our lives,” said Kate. 

  She lay back onto the entrance of the facility, concealed by a neat mound of grass. 

  You couldn’t hear a thing from down below, which she felt comforted by. 

  She felt Varjak do the same next to her. 

  “So, where do you want to go if we get ambushed? Pick any place you like. Apart from France. Or Barcelona.”

  Kate cringed privately. 

  She hadn’t told anyone, but her internal battle with her feelings for Ian hadn’t ceased, despite the time that had passed. 

  She would often forget about him. 

  It was her dreams that kept reminding her. 

  His face was always clear in the dreams, rainy grey with Russian blue eyes. 

  His face was most clearly defined when her dreams returned her to the bed she shared with him once. 

  She didn’t believe she was in love with him. 

  But she certainly believed there was something unfinished there. 

  “I’ve never been to Scotland,” said Kate. “Or Ireland.”

  “Boring,” snorted Varjak. “Let’s go to Antarctica.”

  “Let’s not,” said Kate. “I don’t know, we’ll decide if it happens, I guess.”

  Varjak made a general noise of discontent, then said no more. 

  Instead of rebooting the conversation Kate took the time to think. 

  Where would she like to go? 

  The first thought was the States. 

  Not L.A., but some entirely different state. 

  She’d never been to New York, or Hawaii. They were probably too obvious, she thought.

  She guessed it didn’t actually matter. 

  But if they had to escape to another part of the world for a few months, she would like it if they at least stayed somewhere nice. 

  Preferably nowhere near Barcelona, too.

  Maybe she would choose the States. 

  She probably would. She would tell Varjak the same, when she could be bothered.

  For the moment, they both seemed content just to lie there, not feeling the weight of fatigue but similarly not feeling the urge to talk. 

  They lay arched over the entrance until Camille batted them away some hours later. 

  Kate said goodnight to Varjak as he moved to his office. 

  He gave her a jubilant slap on the back and said the same before going to his laptop. 

  After grimacing, Kate moved to her own room near the end of the warmly lit corridor. 

  Sometimes she forgot which hole in the wall was her’s. 

  She went to her room and rolled into bed. 

  It was then she began to wonder. 

  If she didn’t want to dream about Ian, and didn’t need to sleep, why was it that she allowed herself to sleep? 

  It was an invasive question, even coming from her own mind. 

  She quickly packed the question back down into her subconscious, only knowing that the sensation of sleep and the promise of dreaming was far too tantalizing a prospect to give up.

Reviews

[w2de35657u687y4324rf]

You really do a great job with setting the mood here. You take our well known characters and force the angst of the situation into them. It's wonderfully horrifying; I love it. To see Varjak serious? Holy s**t. You don't even have to explain that it is a bad situation, I can feel it.
I am enjoying the sub-characters that are flowing in. You're not shoving them into my face and screaming their life story through my ear, but rather letting them gleam in the sly, brief perspective of a main character. Beautiful.
Make sure to keep an eye on your grammar. I'm seeing a lot of errors in the quotes, particularly with names, eg., Camille’s brow furrowed. “What? Oh.” She realised. “I hate you Varjak. Take no notice Tristan.” You know quite well that there is a comma between 'you' and 'Varjak'. It's just laziness that lets the errors slide. Make sure to do a quick edit.
I still really hate Ian. The mere mention of him mars my image of Kate. I feel about him the same way I felt about James (and still do feel about James). I am really hoping that he doesn't play a major role here.
Nice Twilight battery, lovely.
Tying up my thoughts here-- they should go to Rome or New Orleans. That would be sexy.
Better than the first chapter, I must say, but that was only intro so it's expected. Lovely, lovely.